Thinking Out Loud…

About school:

Frankly, it’s crazy how much I love it.  There are people I look forward to seeing in class, although I hesitate to call them friends since most of them are half my age.  I don’t know if that’s right or not… but it’s the truth.  Perhaps it’s okay that we get to be friends at school, and that’s where it stays.  At any rate, they’re all good people and maybe that’s all that matters.

I am still working my butt off to keep straight A’s, although I almost derailed myself this semester by purchasing the wrong book for a class.  That mistake lead to two failed quizzes in a marketing class.  ARGH.  Yes.  It took two failed quizzes for me to realize that I didn’t have the correct materials; before that I had been operating under the belief that maybe I just didn’t understand marketing. 

 

About the BLT:

Can I tell you that my kids are driving me batty?  I know why – they’re taking advantage of my distractedness.  Basically it’s like this: the more I concentrate on my homework, the more they realize they can get away with not doing whatever they should be doing.  We have a working system for after school and I had thought it would just be habit for them to continue doing it… yeah, not so much.

T Bub and Lovely L tried out for the school play recently.  T Bub made it and Lovely L did not.  Not that she wouldn’t be an excellent actress (trust me, with all the drama we have, she'd make an incredible actress), but tryouts require that you do a reading… and reading is something Lovely L struggles with.  Although she loves reading books and does so whenever she can sneak away with her Kindle, she still reads at about a third grade level and cannot sound out words phonetically.  I’ve spent every summer working with her, but I think it’s time that I admit that whatever is going on with her reading (and writing… she can’t seem to grasp certain concepts, like where - we’re – were) is beyond my ability to help her.

And Bitty B?  Well, she’s decided that besides soccer and curling, she also wants to play hockey, go back to dance class and be in a play.  Really?  Is that all?

{Curling practice}

 

About eating everything in sight:

Yeah, I’ve gotta stop that.  But why does it have to taste so, so good? Darn you, Nutty Bars, darn you to heck!

Side note: I actually typed in Nutty Buddy, but that didn’t sound right.  So I went to the Google where I learned two things: 1. A Nutty Buddy is the chocolate topped ice cream cone that I also love and 2. an athletic supporter.  Yep.

 

About blogging: 

There are at least five times a day that I think, ‘ohmygosh, I have to write about that!’  But, first comes home stuff, kid stuff, school stuff, business stuff (YES… and I’ll have to write about that later!)  and by then I’ve run out of time for blogging stuff.  I realize this is just a season in my life right now, and have no plans to stop blogging, but I also realize that I have to keep my priorities straight and my goals in sight. 

And as I wrote that, the buzzer on the dryer went off.  Sigh…

Yep, priorities include laundry ; ).

Until next time,

What Am I Doing At School…

Alternately titled:  Back to School with Your Bad Self

Straight out of high school, and I had no idea what I wanted to do with myself.  My mother and grandmother informed me that I would be moving from Indiana to Arizona and enrolling in college there.  And sure enough, the summer I turned eighteen my grandmother hauled me to a college in Arizona and set me up with some general ed. classes. 

It was at that point that I decided I wanted to become an Interpreter.  I would fly the world, and armed with my knowledge of six to eight different languages, I would interpret for whomever could afford my outrageous fees.  And so, at the start of the next semester, I took Spanish II and Introduction to German and Russian classes.

Once my grandmother caught wind of what I was doing, she promptly told me that trying to learn eight languages would be nearly impossible.  And I was struggling;  it was definitely hard.  And so, at the start of the very next semester, I went back to finishing my general ed. classes with an emphasis on Childhood Development and Psychology.

People, that was sixteen years ago.  And here I am, back in those same general ed. classes.*

*Yes, seriously. Since I never graduated and all my credits are over ten years old, I have to retake those classes in order to earn a degree at this school.  As MC would say, it is what it is… 

So here’s a recap of my first week at school:

Highlight:  Another student asking me if I still lived with my parents or if I had my own place.

Low point:  Actually doing the math and realizing that I am, in fact, twice the age of most of the students.

So far, the classes are okay.  Years of life experience have given me new ‘school eyes’, and I’m no longer afraid of the teachers or the other students.  I ask questions when I have them, and I don’t care what the other students think about me.  Well, that’s kind of true… I still like to be liked, but they’re not my peers. 

My peers?  Most of us are parents of a certain age, and some of us have kids only a few years younger than the students I’m taking classes with.  But my peers are all adults, and that cannot be said for some of my fellow students.  I don’t think age makes you an adult, I believe life experience and responsibility does.  I’m being brutally honest and saying I was definitely not an adult at the start of my college experiences.

That said, I’m excited to start this journey of Back to School.  I know I’m still in the ‘honeymoon’ period with school; right now I love it.  I’m hoping to hold on to that feeling when life gets tough, as I know it will: I am a parent of three kids and a wife first and foremost, and I expect there will be times that that will get in the way of my schooling. 

But here’s the thing – I love blogging and the awesome friends I’ve made as a blogger.  I love designing web elements and playing with the code to manipulate the web pages.  I simply love everything about this whole process… and that is what I’m going to school for.  I am now a VCOM student and my area of study is multimedia / web design. 

Pretty nifty, eh?

Well, enough about me…

What are you up to this week?